


By my own choice and thee

by zinjadu



Series: Wed to Blight [55]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: All the choices are bad, Dubious Consent, Established Relationship, F/M, Heavy Angst, No one likes any of this, POV Alistair (Dragon Age), POV Warden (Dragon Age), these poor kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:48:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21694099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: Caitwyn just had two bombs dropped on her head.  That a Warden must die to slay the archdemon, and that there might also be a way out.  A very bad, bad way out.  A re-write of the Dark Ritual conversation, because what the game provides did not fit my Warden nor her relationship with Alistair.This will hurt.Note:This series is fully drafted, and we are in the serious endgame now, friends.  Starting here, we get into some real darkness.  Please pay attention to the warnings and a blanket trigger warning applies for non-con/dub-con and general ickyness.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Tabris (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Alistair/Tabris (Dragon Age), Alistair/Warden (Dragon Age)
Series: Wed to Blight [55]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/879681
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	By my own choice and thee

Caitwyn left her room where Morrigan waited, barely registering her surroundings. She turned in on herself, pushing her emotions down into a little box, locking it tight. She couldn’t be emotional about this. Couldn’t. This was life and death, and she had to think not feel. She could talk him into it. She was good at talking people into things. She could not tell him everything. A child, there would be a child. What would that do to him? He had grown up apart because of his bastardity, and she was about to ask him to—

This wasn’t right, she knew it. Sickness oozed out between the cracks in the box, slinking across her chest like vines, but she fought it down, like taking bad medicine.

She could  _ not  _ tell him. Go to his room, spend one final night in his arms, and know that come the morrow they might be forever parted. Riordan would do his best, he said, but she couldn’t put her faith in one person, that he would die to spare them. So much could go wrong.  _ She _ could die, could throw herself at the Archdemon, but how? Order him to stay away? He wouldn’t listen to it. Take out his knee? He’d still limp after her, the stubborn idiot he was.

_ Her _ stubborn idiot.

Would they fight each other all the way to the Archdemon, each trying to die before the other? A desperate struggle to save each other, and where would that leave them? Options ran through her head, circling, whirling, scenarios, and she blinked, realizing she was standing outside his door. How long had she been standing there? She didn’t know.

There was nothing for it. It wasn’t her choice. It should be his. Had to be his.

Raising her fist, she thought to knock then hesitated. That would be strange. Why would she knock on his door? They’d shared a tent, bodies, hearts; she’d shown him her wounds, let him see all of her, the good and the bad, and he had done the same. The barriers that had stood between them had been overcome, one after the next. Yet she wanted those barriers back now. Distance, distance would make this easier. For her, maybe for him.

She was going to be as clear and precise as possible. No dissembling, no evading, the straight truth. No hiding. How she wanted to hide, to pull the darkness over herself and  _ not _ . Not know what she knew now. Death and blood. It was all death and blood, and there had never been any escape, save one or the other. Not for her, not for him. Not for any of them.  _ Sacrifice _ .

She opened the door.

* * *

“This is payback, right? For all the jokes?” He tried to force his face into a grin, a smirk, to brush off what Caitwyn had just told him. Because it couldn’t be true. It  _ couldn’t _ . It was madness, a poor jape, an attempt to blunt the horror that hung between them courtesy of Riordan. It could be worse, after all. He could have to participate in a blood magic ritual and create a demon baby. Infinitely more horrific.

But she met his eyes calmly, her own eyes large and glinting a deep green in the candlelight. She wasn’t joking.

“How can you even  _ think _ that I’d be willing to—no.” Easy, automatic, that answer. Riordan’s words lingered, echoing in his mind,  _ to kill an Archdemon, a Grey Warden must die _ . Words that made his heart freeze in his chest and his stomach churn, but he’d known what he’d do. If Riordan fell, Alistair would take the final blow. Cait might try to order him away, but like hell he’d listen. She might try to cripple him, to slow him down, but he was bigger than her, stronger. If it meant saving her life, he’d overpower her and knock her unconscious if he had to.

He could die for her, but what she was asking, the  _ offer _ was—no. 

“Think about this rationally,” she told him, as if he were an idiot, as if he didn’t understand  _ perfectly _ well. She did not argue, she did not rail. Instead, it was like she had turned to ice, regarding him with the calm, even expression she had worn when they first met. But while her face might be cold and distant, her hands curled into fists. Only because he knew to look for it did he see it, her tight control, holding on with a grim set of her jaw.

Watching her keep her distance set something off in him, a fury, a fury at her, at himself, at the Wardens, at fate, at  _ everything _ . To come this far, to have been through so much, and here, at the end, to be told there was  _ nothing _ but bitter ashes for them. Tension built in his shoulders, and he lowered his head like a baited dog and glared at her from underneath his brows.

“Don’t, don’t you say that to me,” he bit out. “Nothing about this is rational.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she hissed, bristling like a cat. “I could have not said a word. Would that have been better? I could have made the choice for you, for the both of us, but I  _ didn’t _ .”

“And what did you expect? Hm? That I’d just go along with it? For Andraste’s sake, Cait, you’re asking me to—”

“I  _ bloody _ well know what your choice  _ is _ . I haven’t asked you a damn thing yet, Alistair, because, because,” she petered out, sucking in a hard breath, her grip on her control fracturing, and seeing her struggle ablated the edge of his anger. This was not easy for either of them, and at last she admitted it, with her actions if not her voice. He closed the distance between them, his hands settling lightly on her shoulders. Dipping his forehead to hers, he breathed with her as she forced out the words. “It’s your choice. I can’t make you, and I know,  _ I know _ it’s wrong. It’s not right, and it’s not fair, but if I’d known and said  _ nothing _ ? Would’ve been on me, your death.”

“And if I don’t, Cait, and you die, then your death is on me,” he said, but he kept his voice soft. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her mouth twisted with bitter regret. Of course she had seen that, seen it and brought the choice to him anyway. A cruel thoughtfulness, a mindful curse, a choice that was hardly a choice at all. “I don’t have much room to move, love.”

“I know, Maker help me, I know, and I’m sorry, Alistair, so sorry. I love you, and I know what this is, and I never wanted—” Her voice was thick with barely held back tears, her accent heavy on her words. She held his face gently in her hands, and her touch bled some of the tension from him. She wasn’t holding back anymore. She wasn’t holding him at arm’s length. But that didn’t remove the choice from his shoulders.

He could die for her.

“Ask,” he told her. She stared at him agog, her surprise a rarity. It almost made him laugh, the expression on her face, but it was a black humor that infected him now. The choice was on his shoulders, but it could still be a choice that they made together. Her mouth hung open, trembling with uncertainty, and she searched his face. 

“Ask,” he insisted, before his courage failed him. He held her gaze, trying to calm the wild, panicked beating of his heart as he waited on her. 

“Would you do this?” she asked, voice so small in the night. Closing his eyes, he held her close. Her hands dug into his shirt, her body like a taut wire. He wanted to say no, wanted to pretend he’d never heard the offer and do his best to save her in his way, on his terms. But he couldn’t. 

She had asked.

Holding her tight, he heard her gasp for breath, but he couldn’t let her go, his heart constricting, aching in his chest, revulsion crawling along his skin as they came back to it. Back to the crux of it, the black, rotten heart of the matter. He wanted to be sick, because he didn’t know if it had really been a choice in the first place. Yes, he would die to save her life, but could he do this to save her heart? He had thought she was the strong one, the one who could carry on without him, but maybe she actually needed him as much as he needed her.

"Damn me for this," he muttered, not letting her go, "but I'll do it."

Her sob of relief told him he had done the right thing by her, even if he was about to go against the core tenants of Chantry teaching, to break a vow he had made to himself, to never betray Caitwyn as Maric had betrayed Rowan’s memory, let alone to father a bastard. But she cried in his arms, and he knew he could have done no less, not for her.

For love of her he braced himself not to die, but to do whatever it took to live.

Even if it broke something in him to do it.


End file.
